An Evaluation of the Omnibus Personality Inventory in the Prediction of Attrition in Naval Aviation Training.

摘要

The numerous Navy research efforts to identify motivational predictors of student naval aviator and/or student naval flight officer attrition have met with little success. In spite of the failures associated with the application of personality or motivational measures to naval aviation populations, there is little doubt that much of the attrition in naval aviation training is of a motivational origin. As a result, research personnel continue to seek motivational measures that may identify those individuals most likely to succeed in training. The present report describes an evaluation of the Omnibus Personality Inventory (OPI) as a predictor of student motivational attrition in naval aviator flying training. Initial validation results suggested that certain OPI scales were predictive of student naval aviator and student naval flight officer success in naval flying training programs. A cross-validation analysis was conducted to determine the stability of these findings. The analysis indicated that significant cross-validity relationships existed for current selection tests but not for OPI predictor measures. It must be concluded that the OPI is not sufficiently related to student aviator training performance to be of value in the prediction of aviator motivational attrition. These results support previous conclusions that future aviation selection research should be directed toward the identification of performance oriented, non-paper-and-pencil measures as motivational predictors. (Author)